


Fleece

by berlynn_wohl



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Couch Sex, Domestic Fluff, Gaming, M/M, Shopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2013-10-16
Packaged: 2017-12-29 14:41:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/pseuds/berlynn_wohl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt and Hermann enjoy a day of terminally fluffy domesticity, with maybe a few minutes set aside for shenanigans on the sofa. Also, monsters (duh).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fleece

This fic can be seen as taking place in the same continuity as [Chatter](1000063), though one can enjoy either fic without having read the other.

 

 

*****

 

Hermann poked his head out from under the covers, where morning sunlight streamed into the bedroom, and inhaled deeply. The resulting sensory input made him consider ducking back under the blankets in hopes of avoiding his fate. The breakfast-y smells wafting into the bedroom were lovely, but they meant that Newt was cooking – a dangerous prospect. Hermann had spent nearly his entire life dealing with mathematical probabilities, but when it came to Newt in the kitchen, there was no model for accurate outcome prediction.

After fumbling for his glasses, Hermann threw back the covers and rose from the bed. He wrapped himself in his dressing gown, but he could only find his right slipper, so he padded barefoot into the bathroom to have a pee. Wandering into the kitchen, he found Newt flailing in the general vicinity of the oven.

“It smells wonderful,” Hermann said as he sat on a barstool on the other side of the granite-top island.

“So it’s got that going for it, at least,” Newt snapped, dropping a pan full of quiche on the counter.

“What’s the problem?”

Newt laughed. “…He said, implying that there is only _one_ problem. Um, soooo when I went to put the egg mix on top of the bacon and cheese and onions and stuff, I kinda spilled a lot of it. And I didn’t have enough of everything to re-do the whole egg mixture, so I just poured in what was left. And I used a frozen crust, I know I shouldn’t have but I was lazy, sorry, and the crust was kinda broken, and I tried to patch it up, but the custard ran out between the cracks and…” He poked frantically but ineffectively all around the pan.

“I’m sure it’s fine.”

His hands shaking from frustration, Newt cut a small slice for Hermann, and poured him a cup of coffee.

Hermann ate his portion – dry in places, leaking in others, crumbly all over – in silence. Newt scooped a second piece for himself, and sat next to Hermann, but he couldn’t bear to pick up his fork. Instead he just wrung his hands. “It’s terrible, isn’t it?”

“Of course it’s terrible, darling,” Hermann said mildly, and continued eating it.

They struggled through breakfast together, all the while with Newt promising, “I’ll take you out to lunch. We’ll have a really nice lunch to make up for it.”

“Did you still want to go shopping today?” Hermann asked as he did the washing up. Newt was on the computer, having abandoned, in despair, the kitchen disaster he had created.

Newt had been saying that he wanted to visit Dunelm Mill. They needed new cookware, because Newt had used forks on the Teflon surfaces, and also a throw rug to cover the stain on the carpet where Newt had spilled something purple, and a universal remote to replace the one that Hermann had broken when he threw it in frustration (whilst screaming, “If I had wanted everything I touched to be an indecipherable chaos of button sequences, I would have taken that job offer from NASA!”) Also, they had to replace Hermann’s body pillow, which had grown misshapen after having been folded in half too many times to facilitate sex, before they’d realized that you could purchase purpose-built sex-facilitating pieces of foam, in a variety of shapes and colors.

Newt and Hermann got in the car and drove into the suburbs, where two rows of big-box retailers lined the main road. Hermann was not looking forward to visiting the store, but he had to go along: Newt was not allowed to shop for anything by himself, because he could not be trusted to not buy _everything_ if left to his own devices. Neither was Hermann entrusted to handle shopping duties alone, because his anxiety about going to any harshly-lit and unpleasantly-populated location by himself would keep him from ever going at all.

After a mere ten minutes in the store, it had gotten to the point where Hermann was not even bothering to turn and look at whatever Newt was pointing at when he said, “Omigod, can we get one of these?” The answer was always No. No, we cannot get a lamp with a safari-pattern lampshade. No, we cannot get towels with cartoon characters on them. No, we cannot get a print of an amusing pop-culture variation on Edward Hopper’s _Nighthawks_.

Hermann was examining the cookware on display, trying to decide whether to purchase copper-core aluminum or stainless steel, when Newt descended upon him once more. He tapped Hermann on the shoulder until Hermann finally turned around, and then displayed his latest find: a fleece throw blanket, the type that usually boasted animal prints like leopard or zebra. But this one was green; it had a pattern of reptilian scales.

“Plee-hee- _heeeease_ ,” Newt whined.

“Oh, alright, put it in the trolley,” Hermann said.

“You mean the cart.”

“We’re not having _that_ argument again.”

Hermann paid for the cookware, remote, rug, pillow, and blanket, as well as the items in the impulse-buy area near the registers that Newt had snuck in. Newt pushed the cart _(trolley!)_ out to the car, as he had done for the entire shopping trip, and loaded everything into the car, and did all the driving. Typically, Hermann did not appreciate being coddled, but he made an exception for Newt fussing over him: by eliminating, to the best of his ability, every inconvenience that Hermann might encounter, Newt could usually reduce the number of Things That Irritated Hermann to one. (That one being Newt himself.)

At the first intersection on their way back home, Newt had to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision with another car, coming in the opposite direction, which had made a sudden left turn in front of them. Newt screamed, “Oh my God, are you _turning?_ If only there was some way for you to have _indicated_ that!”

“Please don’t shout in the car,” Hermann said softly.

“Dude, don’t tell me not to shout when shouting is perfectly justified! Ugh, you _always_ tell me not to shout. I mean, okay, maybe I shouldn’t have shouted when we were in the store. Maybe last month I shouldn’t have shouted in the middle of your nephew’s christening. Maybe I shouldn’t have shouted in the Anne Frank house. But _that_ , that thing that just happened right there, that was a shouting situation. Wait up, is that a frozen yogurt place? Holy shit, we are _so_ getting fro-yo right now.” Newt swerved into the parking lot of the shopping center. “I haven’t had frozen yogurt in so long, dude. This is gonna be awesome.”

Newt held the door open for Hermann. Hermann meandered towards the counter where the cashier was standing, but Newt took his arm and led him to the back of the dining area instead. “You have to start back here,” he explained. “Haven’t you ever been to a frozen yogurt place before?”

Along the wall was a row of dispensers, in groups of three. Newt explained, “So each of the groups, you’ve got one flavor on one side, one on the other, and the middle dispenser will do a swirl of both. And then you put all your toppings on over there, and then to charge you they just weigh it.”

Newt grabbed two dishes, handed Hermann one, and then proceeded to pull lever after lever to fill his dish while Hermann examined the pictures above each dispenser carefully. He could have any combination of chocolate and coconut, cheesecake and strawberry, fudge and peanut butter, there was even a red velvet cake flavor. But finally, Hermann elected to pull only the lever under the picture of plain vanilla. Then he looked at all the toppings – cookie dough balls, crumbled vanilla wafers, mochi, Oreos, gummy bears, M&Ms, miniature peanut butter cups, various flavors of syrup – and in the end he decided only to add a few chocolate chips.

Meanwhile, Newt’s dish was a mountain of what appeared to be every flavor, every topping, and every syrup. He handed his card to the cashier, brushing off Hermann’s admonishment: “You are going to make yourself ill.”

“I am a grown-ass man and I can eat what I want.”

Sitting at a pastel-hued table, Newt gobbled his frozen yogurt, whilst Hermann took delicate spoonfuls of his own. He was in another one of those uncomfortable retail situations, where the fluorescent lighting was too bright and other patrons (“mundanes,” Newt called them) threw them both bemused and/or judgmental glances.

About three-quarters of the way into his dish, Newt had slowed down considerably. “I think I got too much,” he mumbled.

“Didn’t I tell you,” Hermann smirked.

In defiance of Hermann’s attitude, Newt narrowed his eyes and continued shoveling frozen yogurt into his mouth; it was obvious to Hermann that Newt was no longer enjoying it, only doing it out of spite. This upset him, so he stood up, took the dish out of Newt’s hands, and walked it to the appropriate bin.

They made their way home, where Newt dutifully carried the shopping in from the car, though he dropped it on the floor as soon as he was in the door. “I’m gonna lie down. I don’t feel good,” he said, and Hermann followed him. Newt flopped onto the bed, and Hermann took off Newt’s shoes, then his own, and then spooned up behind Newt on the bed and rubbed his aching belly until his little groans turned to soft snores.

Hermann wasn’t feeling tired, himself, so when Newt was safely snoozing he got up and picked up the shopping, removing the packaging and placing each item where it belonged. He put the blanket in the wash; he didn’t like using anything straight out of the package, and anyway, by the time Newt woke up, the blanket would be warm and fluffy from the dryer, and they could cuddle under it when they watched a movie together, as they did every Saturday.

When everything was put away, Hermann sat down on the sofa to enjoy a few minutes of blessed silence. In front of him, on the coffee table, there was a stack of typed paper, a chapter from the book Newt was working on. At the top of the page it said _The Effect of Kaiju Blue on Bio-Organisms in the Coastal Regions of the Pacific Ocean_.  Hermann picked it up, and within seconds was searching for a red pen. He spent the next hour flipping through the pages, scribbling in the margins: “Wishful thinking on your part.” “Your heuristics are shameful.” “ _Idola specus!_ ” “Gross misconduct here.” “You had taken a lot of cold medicine before running this test and never managed to reproduce the results.”

When the dryer gave its little triumphant beep to announce that it had completed its cycle, Hermann set aside the chapter and went into the bedroom, where Newt was now sprawled supine across the bed. He tried to place a hand gently on Newt’s shoulder to rouse him, but he grasped a bit harder then he intended, and Newt jerked awake with a gasp.

“Sorry!” Hermann said. “It’s just, if you don’t wake up now, we won’t have time to watch a film before your friends arrive.”

Newt rolled onto his belly, groaning and rubbing his face.

“Do you feel any better?” Hermann asked.

“Little bit,” Newt said. “What movie should we watch?”

“How about _Dr. Strangelove_.”

“Boring! Let’s watch _The Valley of Gwangi_.”

Hermann clenched his fist and tried to quickly think of something that was in between those movies on the Bizarro Continuum. “How about _Blade Runner_?”

“ _Alien_.”

“Deal.”

They watched the movie together on the sofa, under Newt’s new blanket. There was a minimum of fidgeting on Newt’s part, and what there was, on account of their closeness, might reasonably have been called “nuzzling.” When the movie was over, Hermann asked, “What time are you expecting your friends?”

Newt turned on the lamp so he could look at the clock. “Not for another forty-five minutes,” he said, turning back to Hermann with mischief in his eye. He snaked one hand under the blanket and had a feel about. Hermann jumped when Newt found what he wanted. “Does watching gruesome space-horror always put you in the mood?” Hermann asked.

“Only when I’m watching them while sitting next to you.” Both hands were working under the blanket now, unzipping Hermann’s trousers and getting more closely acquainted with what was inside. Hermann followed his lead, but with only one hand, so he could use the other to angle Newt’s face to properly accept a slow, deep kiss.

One of Newt’s hands traveled upwards, pushing under Hermann’s shirt to find and gently flick at one nipple. When it came to this part of his body being stimulated, Hermann had two responses: “Ow, stop that at once,” and “Harder, oh God pinch them harder.” If you were too bold too soon and heard the former, you had no hope of hearing the latter at all, so Newt was very careful, gently pressing them one at a time between his index and middle fingers, with frequent excursions to the warm, smooth skin over Hermann’s ribs and the sparse patch of hair across his sternum.

Meanwhile, Hermann had his tongue in Newt’s mouth and his hand down Newt’s trousers, and the fact that they were on the sofa, hurrying to finish before someone walked in the door, made Newt feel like a naughty teenager, and the little shivers that ran up and down his spine were making him squirmy.

Hermann disengaged from Newt’s mouth with a wet little smack, and said, with their lips still brushing against each other, “We’re going to make a terrible mess if we continue like this. We might not have time to clean up properly.”

Newt nodded. “Okay, I have an idea. Here, can you lie down? So your back stays against the back of the sofa?” Newt tried nudging him in one direction, but to follow Newt’s instructions Hermann had to lean in the other direction, so he wouldn’t end up resting on his bad side. Newt followed his lead, lying down in the opposite direction along outer edge of the sofa cushion. Hermann’s erection was barely peeking out of his trousers, but Newt craned his neck forward to slip it into his mouth, and Hermann got the idea and reciprocated.

Newt was glad that Hermann had prompted them to change things up. The truth was, Hermann was a decent kisser but his grip was volatile and he gave the worst handjobs imaginable, and Newt knew he was nothing to write home about himself. As soon as he started to feel good he would get lost in his own pleasure, and his hand would sit there, loosely cupped but motionless and accomplishing nothing. Newt found it preferable for them to use their mouths on each other; Hermann just had to remember to cover his teeth, and even if Newt got distracted by a thought and stopped, Hermann could rock his hips and continue to slide himself in and out.

Newt’s mouth was too full to indicate to Hermann that he was close. Instead, he grunted and tapped Hermann on the arm with his free hand, then ejaculated with a relieved groan. The vibration of these noises went straight from Newt’s throat into Hermann’s body, and Hermann followed him moments later, pulling off Newt’s cock and gasping as his hips stuttered.

Almost immediately, Hermann was sitting up, and then tugging at Newt’s shirt to get him up as well. “How about a little afterglow?” Newt said, but Hermann reminded him that there was no time: Newt’s guests would arrive shortly, and they had just a few minutes to brush their teeth, straighten their clothes, comb their hair, and just generally try to look like they hadn’tjust been sixty-nining under a lizard blanket.

The first guest to arrive was Nigel. Nigel always showed up first; he was overly eager about game night, as it was the only social life he had to speak of. Tony and Harold always arrived together; neither were very open about their personal lives, and so no one knew if they were lovers or if they just carpooled. And last to arrive was Greg, because he had to put his kids to bed before he was allowed to go out for the evening.

Newt did all the greeting, got all the guests settled in; Hermann was in the kitchen, pouring bowls of snacks and putting together a plate of cold meats and cheeses, and making sure everyone had the beverage of his choice. “What a lovely housewife you’ve got, Geizsler,” Greg remarked, to much chuckling. “Wish my Emma was so attentive.”

“Indeed,” Hermann sneered. “You know, last year I made two and a half million dollars traveling around the world, giving lectures to the greatest living thinkers about how I formulated a plan to expel colossal extra-dimensional monsters from our world and end a ten-year global catastrophe. But the thrill of my life, sir, is serving you fizzy drinks.” Much hooting and mocking laughter commenced. “And I don’t know much about your Emma, but you have failed to demonstrate to me why she should be any more impressed with you than I am.”

Everyone, including Greg, laughed uproariously. They all loved Hermann, and came to delight in his scathing comments, as if he were one of those comedians that you paid to see with the expectation that he would pick on people in the audience and be cruel to them. It made Newt proud when the others would say things, sometimes months later, along the lines of, “D’you remember that one time, when Hermann said…? God, that was amazing.”

Hermann, for his part, also found himself more intensely fond of Newt when Newt’s friends were over. For one thing, Newt had someone else to direct his energy at, which was a relief, but also, of the four men, though some were younger than Newt, none were as physically attractive as him. They were losing their hair, or had weak chins or flabby jowls. It gave Hermann a little frisson of satisfaction that he had such a good-looking boyfriend. Not that looks were important or anything. But still.

“Alright, gentleman, I’m going to curl up with a good book,” Hermann announced. “I’ll leave you adventurers to your monster-slaying.”

“Not tonight,” said Nigel. “Newt’s running a new campaign, and he fixed it so we’re all _playing_ monsters, and _fighting_ the adventurers!”

“Isn’t that awesome?” Newt said, obviously quite proud of himself. “Nigel’s a kobold, and Greg’s a construct, and Harold’s a githzerai, and Tony is a bugbear.”

Hermann was the least puzzled by the last term, but still puzzled nonetheless. “Is a bugbear more like a bug, or more like a bear?” he asked.

“Neither.”

“Ah. Well, as I say, I’ll leave you to it.” Hermann retired to the master suite, took a nice long bath, and got into bed with a spy novel. The group was quite raucous, and once in a while he could hear their cryptic exchanges, such as:

“You’re proposing that we sneak into the giant’s cave, and steal some of his gold, and then drop it in the bear’s cave, so that when the giant wakes up he’ll think the bear betrayed him, and then kill the bear so that we don’t have to? That’s your plan?”

“Um, well…the way _you_ say it, it just sounds stupid…”

The game went on for several hours after Hermann had fallen asleep. Having finally herded everyone out the door, around half-two, Newt left all the remaining snacks and crumpled napkins on the table to be dealt with in the morning, and climbed into bed with Hermann, still smelling vaguely of Quavers. Hermann woke briefly when the mattress shifted next to him, and Newt curled around him in the same shape as he was curled around his body pillow.

“Did you have fun with your friends?” Hermann mumbled.

“It was great, yeah! But now I’m here, and you still owe me some afterglow.”

“Hmm. That only requires that we lie together happily, yes?”

“Pretty much.”

“Lovely,” Hermann said, and fell immediately back to sleep.


End file.
